Dungeon Keeper Reboot: The Price of Being Bad

The most important piece of info you can take away from this preview is what the mobile version of Dungeon Keeper isn’t. It isn’t an enhanced port of Bullfrog’s classic, a la last year’s Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition. It also isn’t something you’ll be able to sit and play for hours at a time unless you have an excess of patience or discretionary income to blow. That being said, it also isn’t a bad game, and if its change in focus and free-to-play business model aren’t issues for you, it has all the makings of a fun tower defense/strategy hybrid.

Prepare to manage your dungeon as sadistically as possible.

The biggest change from Peter Molyneux’s 1997 classic (he isn’t involved in this one, of course) is that you construct just one dungeon, and then build it up and iterate upon it throughout the campaign rather than starting from scratch several times. Besides that, the basic gameplay loop of digging, building, and defending is pretty true to the be-as-evil-as-you-can-be original. It boasts a welcome emphasis on traps, and of course, you dictate the path that intruders of your dungeon will take by choosing where the entrances are and digging out paths to snake any would-be plunderers to their certain doom. Floor panels with retractable spikes and razor-blade spewing wall-slits are just a couple of the torturous tools at your disposal.

Complementing your arsenal of traps is a grimoire of powerful spells like jets of flame and wall-obliterating bombs. These become particularly useful when you raid other players’ dungeons. Multiplayer is a big piece of this reboot’s puzzle, giving players a chance to put their creations to the test against other dungeon keepers. The game has an appreciable number of elements to consider, which makes designing the perfect dungeon an enjoyably involved affair. Refining your creation until it offers an ideal mix of resource generation, defenses, and unit-producing structures will no doubt require a sizeable investment of time.

Am I evil? Yes I am.

This is where the free-to-play factors stick their nose in. It’s worth noting that there’s no pay-to-win element here, but there’s a whole lot of potential for waiting around if you don’t open up your wallet. In order to erect structures and make pathways, you need to dig out the blocks you want to build on. Each block takes one of your imp minions a full minute to clear, so with two imps, clearing a 3x3 area for construction would involve five minutes of staring at your screen while they toil away for you, less if you slap the little guys around a bit to motivate them like in the old games. Unsurprisingly, you also get a prompt to spend “gems” (which you attain through in-app purchases) to complete individual blocks instantly.

A less in-your-face example is the gold cost of playing multiplayer and practice matches. Finding a human opponent to face off with costs a paltry 10 gold, but performing a test raid on your own dungeon to see how well it functions costs a whopping 200. The former isn’t such a big deal, as you can earn back your gold with an occasional victory, but the latter seems like a potential nuisance.

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Would-be intruders will be *shocked* by what you've done with the place.

Imagine sitting down to work on your dungeon, and having to mentally budget out some of the gold you’ve accrued for the inevitable test runs you’ll want to make. If you just spent all your gold on upgrades and structures, you won’t have any left for matchmaking or testing. At that point, your choices are to either set the game down and come back when your mines have built up the necessary gold, or head to the in-game shop to buy gold with real-life cash. Depending on how EA balances resource income rates and real-money costs, I’m a bit concerned that the kind of long, multi-hour benders I used to go on in the classic PC original simply won’t be possible unless I shell out a few extra bucks.

I like the core mechanics of this new version of Dungeon Keeper. It recalls much of the mischievousness and depth of its namesake. Right now, the free-to-play implementation feels a little intrusive and limiting, but honestly, that fear isn’t going to stop me from downloading it.